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Russian TV worker who protested war on live broadcast is fined

A Russian state television employee who stormed a live broadcast Monday was interrogated by police for 14 hours and fined by a Moscow court Tuesday.

“I spent two days without sleep,” the woman, Marina Ovsyannikova, said in a video recorded outside of the courtroom Tuesday by Mediazona, an online news site.

“I wasn’t allowed to contact my relatives or people close to me,” Ovsyannikova said, adding that she was not allowed “access to any legal representation, so I was in a fairly difficult position.”

Ovsyannikova, who worked for Channel 1 in Moscow, was detained Monday after she burst onscreen during a popular news show, yelling, “Stop the war!” and holding up a sign that read, “They’re lying to you here.”

Immediately after, a Russian human rights group named OVD-Info circulated a prerecorded video in which Ovsyannikova said she was “deeply ashamed” to have helped make “Kremlin propaganda.”

The fine issued Tuesday was for that video, not the on-air protest. Ovsyannikova was charged with organizing an unauthorized public event and fined the equivalent of about $273, according to Sergey Badamshin, chairman of a Moscow bar association.

The protest may cost her more dearly.

Tass, a state publication, reported that Ovsyannikova was being investigated for violating Russia’s new “false information” law, which carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison for anyone convicted of disseminating news about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that goes against the Kremlin’s official narrative. Badamshin confirmed that the investigation was underway.

Dmitri Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said at a news conference Tuesday that what “this woman did is hooliganism.”

Ovsyannikova got a much warmer response from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In a televised address Tuesday, he expressed gratitude for “that woman who walked in the studio of Channel One with a poster against the war.”


This article originally appeared in The New York Times.


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